The present invention relates to electronic communication apparatus and, more specifically, to a method used in an electronic communication apparatus to download application programs from the Internet.
In recent years, the developing PDA (personal digital assistant) trends to thinner, lighter and compacter design. A new generation of PDA provides versatile functions, i.e., the functions of different electronic consumer goods are integrated to form a multipurpose electronic communication apparatus, for example, combining with a mobile telephone to form a PDA with mobile phone function, or combining with a modem to form an internet PDA. These versatile electronic communication apparatus commonly have the function of downloading application programs from the Internet. The editing system of these electronic communication apparatus executes either of the following two methods to download application programs from the Internet.
1. provide multiple connection addresses for every application program under downloading, so that the editing system can download every application program to the corresponding address code subject to actual requirements; or
2. Reserve a segment area from the system memory, so that the editing system can copy the application program to the segment area and then execute the program.
The aforesaid editing system application program downloading operating methods has drawbacks. In the aforesaid first method, the editing system needs to drive every application program to produce an address code corresponding to every different address segment when processing downloading, i.e., if the editing system provides 10 address segments for 10 application programs, every application program must provides 10 code numbers corresponding to the 10 address segments for use by the editing system when downloading the application programs. If to shift the application programs from one address segment to another during post procedures, it must download the code number matching the new address segment. This procedure is complicated. Further, in the aforesaid second method, the editing system must copy every application program to the preserved area and then execute the program. This complicated procedure results in low speed in application program execution. Further, because the preserved area has a space limitation, the size of the application program to be downloaded is limited.
The present invention has been accomplished to provide a method of downloading application programs on the editing system platform of an electronic communication apparatus, which eliminates the aforesaid drawbacks. It is one object of the present invention to provide a method of downloading application programs on the editing system platform of an electronic communication apparatus, which drives the editing system to scheme a total area from the memory for use by the application programs to be downloaded so that the downloaded application program can be stored in any address within the total area without leaving a particular space for executing the downloaded application programs, so that the copy action is eliminated during execution of the downloaded application programs and the downloaded application programs are free from the limitation of the memory space. It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of downloading application programs on the editing system platform of an electronic communication apparatus, which eliminates the editing system from providing multiple address segments for the downloaded application programs, so that the arrangement of the downloaded application programs is free from the constraint of the address and, the number of application programs to be downloaded is unlimited within the allowance of the total area. It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method of downloading application programs on the editing system platform of an electronic communication apparatus, which enables all downloaded application programs to be stored in any address in the schemed total area so that the downloaded application programs can easily be arranged, and the memory space can be fully utilized. It is still another object of the present invention to provide method of downloading application programs on the editing system platform of an electronic communication apparatus, which uses software to achieve interruption, so that no additional hardware equipment is required. The method of the present invention includes the step of connecting an electronic communication apparatus to the Internet, the step of driving an editing system of a processor of the electronic communication apparatus to define a total area from a memory thereof for use by the application programs to be downloaded from the Internet, for enabling the application programs to be stored in any address within the total area, the step of driving the editing system to directly correct the operating instruction of direct address searching to the correct address when downloading an application program from the Internet and then to search the address after address correction, and the step of using a software interrupt (SWI) to alternate the operating instruction of indirect address searching so as to obtain the desired correct address for the editing system for further indirect address searching operation.